A Drug for Angels
by walker-baitxx
Summary: "It's the purest element but it's so volatile / An equation heaven sent, a drug for angels". A bit of Scourge backstory. Partially canon, partially original, three short drabble-esque things. Goes hand-in-hand with Sun in Your Hands.


**So this will later be incorporated into Sun in Your Hands, but I just got this idea and needed to write it down because I am 100% Scourge trash (he's just such a tragic character!). Spoilers for SIYH (I guess?), but with the tag Jedi Knight/Lord Scourge you guys saw this coming. And it is canon that Scourge had a "first love" but not much is known about her so she's basically an OC here. And the second love is not canon (as far as I know), and definitely an OC.**  
 **Also, it's probably really cheesy so I apologize in advance, but I tried to not make it super cringey.**

* * *

 _"It's the purest element but it's so volatile_  
 _An equation heaven sent, a drug for angels"_

* * *

The first thing he had noticed about her was her eyes. They were a Sith's eyes, a beautiful golden-yellow, and deep with emotion. They shone when she smiled at him, and reminded him of the sun they never had the chance to see on Dromund Kaas. Her skin was a lovely, unblemished crimson, her hair vivid black and knotted behind her head in a bun. They met at the Academy outside of Kaas City - she pinned him down in their combat class and flashed that smile - and he was immediately smitten. Her name was Charris, and she moved with the confidence of someone who knew who she was and how to defend herself, and with the propriety of a woman who had grown up in Kaas City. Her voice was soft like honey, a lilting breath in his ear when they whispered to each other during instruction.

She kissed him first. They were deep in the forests of Dromund Kaas, hours from the Citadel, and their combined efforts had just taken down a massive gundark, and he looked to her and she looked to him, fire and desire in those golden eyes. It was his first _ever_ kiss, and it tasted of yearning and passion and rain and the Dark Side. He held her hand until they returned to Kaas City and her smile was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

The next time they sparred he _let_ her take him down.

They spent almost every waking moment together. Sitting beside each other in their classes, isolating themselves in the empty armory to eat their meals, taking trip after trip into the jungles of the planet. One of those trips, mere months after that first kiss, culminated in the beautifully awkward consummation of their relationship. Charris had never been with anyone else either, and their whispers and moans echoed in the cave. He held her afterwards and told her he loved her, and that he would never love anyone else. Her golden eyes brightened and she kissed him with such emotion and tenderness that it stole his breath away.

And he did love her. Charris was strong and outspoken. Her favorite pastime was breaking into the offices of the Darths and Overseers at the Academy, not getting caught, and then sharing silent giggles with Scourge as they watched their superiors rant and fume. She was incredibly skilled with a lightsaber, cunning, and passionate. She taught him how to love (emotionally and physically), and how to navigate Sith politics and Kaas aristocracy. (And perhaps in hindsight that was part of her why he loved her so much - she was bright and refined and powerful.)

And she loved him - until they fought. She would scream that he was too arrogant, too prideful to admit that he was wrong or that he had hurt her. And he would cower inside himself, spitting cold, harsh words that he didn't mean and they spent the night apart. But when they came back together he loved her all the more. And Charris was there through everything. That time he sat in the infirmary for two days with lightning burns from an Overseer, or when a Darth expressed her wish to take him on as an apprentice; when they graduated from the Academy. In between well-wishers and groveling bootlickers he had caught her soft, proud, golden eyes watching him and he had never loved her more.

They got an apartment in Kaas City as they awaited news of his assignment (she was training under the Director of the Defense of the Empire, and he'd held her so tight when they received the news) and they talked about marriage. They talked about their future children's names. They attended the Kaas City Opera and traversed the markets arm-in-arm. He cooked dinner for her and they hosted parties, and he was going to marry her. He woke up every morning and told himself that. And he'd meant to. He had. Really, truly meant to.

But that was _before._

Charris's own master had assigned him to the dark outskirts of the Empire, to extinguish rebellions on their newly conquered planets, and he was due to leave in no more than a week. He and Charris fought. _I have seen the way he looks at you_ , Scourge would hiss, towering over her small body; _he wants you for himself_. And Charris would tell him he was being ridiculous - _this is the perfect opportunity for you to make a name for yourself and defend our Empire._ There were her usual quips of him being too arrogant to _open your eyes and see past your pride_ and he called her a harlot, told her through clenched teeth and stifled anger to return to her master. So she did. And Scourge spent the days before he was to leave alone, wallowing in his self-loathing,

 _You fool, you ruined everything._

his sorrow,

 _Charris, I would take it back if I could._

and his loneliness.

 _Charris, I miss you._

He never saw her again.

But he heard she killed her master.

After agreeing to marry him.

* * *

More than a century passed in agony, desolation, and contemplation. Scourge served his Emperor with fraudulent loyalty and found it increasingly easier to live in immortality - finding a way to turn off his emotions and his humanity decidedly helped. He became immune to the pain the ritual caused and immune to emotions. He could no longer feel the soft skin of a lover (not that he'd taken any since assuming his new title), could no longer taste the sweetness of honeycrust on his tongue, could no longer feel the Dromund Kaas rains on his face. His heart did not constrict at the thought of Charris or what could have been or at the saddest moment in his favorite holonovel, nor did it pound in terror when he stood before his Emperor or when he found himself surrounded by lightsabers and blasters. It merely beat in his chest, enough to keep him alive.

And that's what he was.

Simply _alive_.

Nothing more, nothing less.

And then he met Thaïs.

She was human, with dark skin and dark eyes and dark hair that curled around her face and down her back, with teeth that radiated against the ebony of her skin and long thing fingers that curved around a lightsaber.

And she was spying on him.

Or that was what he could gather around a Force choke.

 _Imperial Intelligence sent me_ , she'd gasped.

 _You are not skilled at your job_ , he noted, releasing her.

And the smile she gave him made him shiver. It made his heart quicken, and his humanity shoved against the wall he'd built around it.

He loved her through the pain. He loved her in secret on Dromund Kaas. He loved her even when he knew he shouldn't - _you are supposed to be committed to finding the Jedi from your vision, not falling in love._ He loved her for years, and the longer he loved her the harder it became to hide. There were whispers in Intelligence of their Sith's love affair with _the_ _Wrath, can you believe it?_ The Dark Councilors frowned on it, and one braved addressing the subject with the Emperor himself.

Thaïs wanted children one day. She told him this in bed one night as a means of distracting him from the pain he felt every single day now, and she held him and talked about their future.

 _We can move far away from here - I've heard murmurs of an outer rim of the galaxy, far from any Empire or Republic or Jedi or Sith. We can - no ssh, it's okay - we can live there and-and we can be together..._

She would tell him this everyday. And he clung to it, as much as he knew it could not happen.

She was on a mission to the outer reaches of their Empire when she went missing. Weeks later she was determined _killed in action_ and Scourge's entire body and soul ached so bad he shoved it all back, back deep inside him, back inside the confines of the recesses of his mind, back where he couldn't find it again. The Emperor showed him Thaïs's body, told him it was punishment - _your allegiance is to me and me alone_. And it didn't hurt. He simply looked at her, the second greatest love of his long life, her body scarred and burned with lightning, and felt nothing.

He was alone again.

And it didn't hurt.

He wouldn't let it hurt again.

Never.

* * *

 _You're beautiful._

Aurelia's voice was hardly more than a breath in his ears, her fingertips ghosting over his skin like she knew he was afraid. And he was, if he was honest. So she was gentle with him, gentle with his body and his heart and his mind and his soul. The tenderness of their first touch had shocked him and he'd felt it clearly through the constant agony inside him, felt it like a soft warmth spreading over his entire being.

When the pain returned she was always there. She would hold him, promising in quiet whispers _we'll help you through this, we'll make you better_. Some days were better than others, and she told him jokes and he read to her. On the nights when it got so bad he could not even speak she told him _you can turn it off, darling, it's okay, I understand_ , fingers stroking his cheek.

But he didn't want to anymore.

Less than a month by her side had left him hopelessly fallen, and the moment she looked at him with those green eyes of hers, filled with yearning and longing and desire he let go. He felt every inch of his love for her, a love that had spent weeks building and building deep in his subconscious and when he kissed her it ruptured. He knew it would lessen over time, smooth out into something less intense, but still just as bright.

 _If I turn it off, I lose you._

She smiled.

So did he.


End file.
